A medicament may be delivered into a patient by syringe.
The medicament may be loaded into the syringe at the time of delivery to the patient. The medicament may be “pre-filled” into the syringe prior to packaging the syringe for use by a practitioner.
The medicament may be loaded into the syringe in an injectable form.
The medicament may be loaded into the syringe in a form or composition that requires conversion prior to injection. For example, a medicament that is loaded in a solid, crystalline, gelatinous, paste, slurry, hydrogel or liquid form may require mixing with another substance that is in solid, crystalline, gelatinous, paste, slurry, hydrogel or liquid form.
The syringe may be pre-filled with the medicament during manufacture. Pre-filled syringes are advantageous with respect to safety, accurate dosing and simplicity of use.
Some medicaments exhibit low stability in liquid form. Desiccating these medicaments, as by lyophilization, yields a dry form with higher stability. Syringes manufactured containing such dry medicament and in which the liquid injectable form can be timely reconstituted for delivery, combine the advantages of pre-filled syringes with enhanced shelf-life.
To obtain the dry form of medicament in situ within the syringe or within a syringe part (such as a tube), a medicament-containing interior of the syringe or of the syringe part is exposed to a desiccation process. Typically, the desiccation process proceeds within a setting (for example, a closed chamber) in which temperature and pressure are carefully regulated. Manufacturing syringes pre-filled with desiccated medicament is complicated by re-exposure of the medicament to airborne humidity following the desiccation process and prior to the interior being sealed off from surroundings outside the regulated setting.
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide apparatus and methods for reducing the exposure to humidity of medicament desiccated within a syringe or within a syringe part.